What Laptop Hard Drive Size Is Best For My Needs?

The laptop's data is stored and processed by the hard disk. It's crucial to understand how to choose the right size hard disk for your laptop. When upgrading your laptop's hard disk, you may question: what size hard drive is suitable for my laptop, and how much storage space do I require?

These questions are straightforward to address. You simply need to grasp some fundamental principles for selecting an appropriate-sized laptop hard drive and acquire knowledge on effectively managing disk space flexibly and rationally.

Thus, in this post, we’ll show you all the basic information about laptop hard disk and offer you some tricks to release available space on your disk, also, you can learn how to upgrade laptop hard disk without reinstalling OS or other apps.

Basic you need to know of laptop hard drive physical size

Laptop hard drive size can also mean physical size like how many inches, and the storage space of a disk. Theoretically, hard drive physical size has 2 standards: 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch.

For laptop users, you should choose 2.5-inch hard disk for your device, while 3.5-inch disk for desktop device. Here is a comparison of two types of disk:

When you compare the sizes of these two drives, you'll notice that the smaller 2.5-inch drive is around 17% the size of the bigger 3.5-inch drive. A 3.5-inch hard drive is unlikely to be utilized in a laptop. They are far more likely to have a 2.5-inch drive. 2.5-inch drives have been used in laptops for a long time, therefore they will still be used in older computers.

How to choose proper laptop hard drive for a laptop?

Of course, there are different types and sizes of internal storage that you can get for your laptop. When shopping for hard disks for your laptop, two factors are very important:

• The drive’s storage capacity
• The rotational speed of the drive

Hard drives with a higher storage capacity typically outperform those with a lower capacity. Generally, the higher the rotational speed, the more responsive the drive. In contrast, a drive with a slower rotational speed would often consume less power, albeit this is negligible.

Nowadays, you can get a hard disk for your laptop with a storage capacity of 2 TB. A laptop hard drive with a storage capacity of roughly 160 GB is available at a moderate cost. If you're looking for a new laptop, you'll normally find options for 500 GB and 1 TB hard drives.

▶ For HDD users

If you are an HDD user, you must consider two factors: the drive's storage capacity and its rotating speed. In general, larger hard drives outperform smaller ones.

In general, the higher the RPM, the more sensitive the drive. So, what hard disk size do I need for my laptop? It all depends on your specific use case.

For home users, a laptop hard disk size of 250 to 500GB is sufficient. Most laptop users utilize 500GB hard drives, which are more than adequate for a typical laptop setup. In this case, we recommend acquiring at least 1 TB of space (if feasible) for business use. File sizes are increasing, as are laptop apps. Meanwhile, your operating system will use around 20 GB of hard disk space.

We recommend that you purchase at least 1 TB of storage for corporate use. File sizes are becoming greater, as are laptop apps. You should also examine your operating system. Windows 10 will take up somewhere between 15 and 20 GB of hard disk space.

If you need extra storage capacity, you can normally install multiple hard drives on a desktop computer. This is not achievable on most computers, so choose for as much storage space as possible. Although 2 TB SSDs are available for laptops, you are unlikely to require this much storage space.

▶ For SSD users

SSD (solid-state drive) now is the mainstream on disk market. It is much faster in reading and writing, quieter during working, and more durable than a traditional HDD(hard disk drive). So, most users prefer an SSD drive on their computer, some users also choose to replace old HDD with an SSD drive to make computer work faster.

The maximum capacity will most likely be 1 TB, which will be significantly more expensive than a regular hard drive. Many laptops now come with 256 GB SSD storage, which is suitable for home use. It makes sense for businesses and heavy users to invest in a 512 GB SSD, or even a 1 TB if they can. Purchasing laptops with 128 GB SSD drives may result in running out of space on the C drive.

So, you need to think about how you are going to use your laptop. If you like to store many large files such as games, videos, and high-resolution images, you should go for a larger SSD drive. It depends on the budget that you have available.

Most SSD drives are available in SATA format, although additional options include NVMe, PCIe, and M.2. NVMe and M.2 SSD drives generally have faster read and write rates than SATA SSDs. The PCIe format is typically used for video card storage.

How to manage laptop hard drive space size

To manage laptop hard drive space size, you can choose Windows Disk Management. It is Windows' built-in disk partition manager. It may assist you in doing some fundamental disk partitioning tasks, such as creating volumes, deleting volumes, extending/shrinking volumes, formatting partitions, changing drive letters, and so on.

You can access Disk Management via the following two different ways: right-click Windows start menu and choose Disk Management from the list, or press Windows + R key and then input msc and hit Enter.

Then, you can select a partition or disk on the main interface and then right-click it. You will see a list of features you can choose. The prompts will guide you to complete the operation. If you want to manage a hard disk or SSD, USB flash drive, SD card, you may select the whole disk and right-click it to choose a corresponding feature.

Users may manage drives and partitions using Disk Management's basic functions. However, it lacks sophisticated functionality such as transferring space between drives, converting MBR to GPT without data loss, changing cluster size, and converting FAT to NTFS without formatting drive.

At the moment, if you need to manage a laptop hard drive with additional functions that Disk Management does not provide, you can download AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

This powerful utility allows you to expand a partition regardless of whether there is unallocated space directly beneath the extended partition in Windows. AOMEI Partition Assistant can only assist you increase the partition if there is unallocated space close to it, whether on the left or right side.

Furthermore, you may use AOMEI Partition Assistant to expand partitions, relocate and resize partitions, clone disks/partitions, check and repair disks, and so on.

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Case 1. Extend partition via allocating drive space

Step 1. Open this software, right-click a partition that has enough space (here is D partition), and then choose Allocate Free Space.

Step 2. Enter the size of free space you would like to add into another partition (here is C drive), and then click OK.

Step 3. Now you can preview that some free space has been allocated to C drive from D partition. Click Apply to save the changes. Then you will extend partition C.

Case 2. Move installed apps to release space on C drive

If you find there are some programs you don't use often on your disk, you can also use "App Mover" function to relocate them to release more important storage space for your C drive.

Step 1. Enter "App Mover" function.

Click “Free up”, then select the “App Mover” feature.

Step 2. Confirm move subject.

In the new window, click “App Mover”. If you want to move folders, you can choose "Move Folders".

Step 3. Select one partition that you want to move applications.

In the new window, you will see all partitions, and the number and size of installed programs on every partition will also be displayed. Select one partition where the target programs are stored and click "Next".

Step 4. Tick Apps you want to move.

Choose the applications you want to move and select the target location, then click "Move".

Step 5. Confirm the moving task.

In the pop-up window, you need to confirm forcibly closing running applications when moving starts. Click "OK" to begin the process.

Warning: To ensure the apps run properly during the moving, please don't move or delete files by yourself in the source and target directories. Just leave it all to the software.

How to Upgrade laptop hard drive size without reinstalling

It is normal to update your laptop hard disk when you discover that the current size is insufficient or too tiny. Many laptop users are now migrating from hard drives to SSDs to improve PC performance and speed.

If you wish to update your laptop hard drive to a faster SSD or a larger HDD to enhance hard drive capacity, after selecting the appropriate disk, use AOMEI Partition Assistant's "Disk Clone" tool to effortlessly clone the old disk to the new one.

1. Connect SSD drive to your laptop

First of all, you have to choose a proper SSD drive based on disk size, interface, and thickness for your laptop. And connect it to your laptop via a SATA-to-USB or adapter, don’t forget to make sure it is detected by your computer. If you're using a new disk, don't forget to initialize the disk first.

2. Clone old disk to new one

Step 2. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click the target disk (here we choose disk 1) and in the top toolbar, click “Clone” > “Clone Disk”.

Step 3. In the subsequent window, two different disk copying methods are offered. Choose one according to your requirements, and click "Next".

① "Clone Disk Quickly" will copy only used space to another disk, with which you can clone large HDD to small SSD.
② "Sector by Sector Clone" is to copy every sector, no matter whether it is used or unused, to another disk, which requires the destination disk equal to or larger than the source disk.

Step 4. Now, select the SSD drive as the destination disk and you can tick "Optimize the performance of SSD". Then click "Next" to continue.

Step 5. In this window, you can edit partitions on the SSD drive if you choose "Clone Disk Quickly" in step 2. Also, you can keep the defaults and hit on "Next".

Step 6. Finally, click "Apply" on the main interface to clone laptop HDD to SSD.

3. Install cloned SSD into the laptop for replacement

At last, after cloning laptop hard disk to SSD drive, you have to remove the old HDD and install the cloned SSD for the replacement. See how to do it:

Step 1. Place your laptop upside-down with the power unplugged and battery out if possible. In its back cover, you should see a plastic cut-out panel covered by some screws. If you see two panels, remove the one marked by the hard drive symbol. If your laptop has no cut-out, you need to take the entire bottom off.

Step 2. After removing the screws, pry the cut-off panel off with a sharp object.

Step 3. With the panel off, you will see the hard drive inside. If your HDD is secured to a bracket by screws, remove the screws and detach the drive. Then replace your new SSD into the use the same screws to secure it.

Step 4. At last, screw the back panel covering the drive back on.

When everything is done, you need to restart your laptop, long-press ESC, F1, F2, F8, or F10 during the initial startup screen to enter BIOS setup, in which you need to change the boot order to boot computer from cloned SSD.

To sum up

In this post, you've now learned about the laptop hard drive sizes, how to manage and upgrade laptop hard drives. If you're not sure what size hard disk you need for your laptop, use the tips in this article to select the appropriate laptop hard drive or solid-state drive. And when you need to update your laptop hard disk, simply follow the methods above.

Hope this guide will help you manage your laptop hard drive size well and safely upgrade disk to improve PC performance.